boys and animals and plants are dying in many areas in canada we cannot live without the land and water of laws older than this colonial government about how to live with the land. well put and now although it's been years since protests of those kind of taken place in canada or the us tens of thousands of people are supporting the movement and holding demonstrations and solidarity across both countries so i hope you learn more about i don't know more and why it transcends us and canadians policy canada's policies are i'm joined by racial justice and native rights blogger at the nation or a god thank you so much for coming on or i abbi thanks for having me so i wanted to first ask about this piece of legislation bill c. forty five which many believe is a challenge to indigenous sovereignty talk about who benefits from the bill and who stands to lose the most. it's really corporations that are going to benefit the most. these protests have really started up because this huge huge piece of legislation we're talking about four hundred fifty pages worth of legislation and

huge omnibus bill. includes changes to the indian asked which is something that shouldn't be part of any kind of budget implementation bill it also changes the environmental assessment act and then also the navigate navigable waters act of canada and. these for the indian act in particular it changes the way that land is leased out there's a misconception that currently land can't be leased up by first nations in fact it can there's a process through which that happens this huge on the bus bill just takes that away the navigable waters act puts nearly all of the rivers and lakes in canada basically up for grabs despite the environmental degradation that might come along with it and it really paves the way for pipelines to come through and the environmental assessment act basically lowers the standards through which

corporations would have to meet certain environmental criteria in order to begin new projects or it seems like there's been advances against indigenous communities across these lands for decades centuries and of course why this bill specifically i mean it was just kind of the tipping point to garner this movement and sparked this outrage whether just wait too much did it go farther than any other bill had gone. you know that's a good question and this really is a centuries old problem this really started with colonization post fourteen ninety two and i think that the reason that this bill is getting so much attention is because it really challenges indigenous sovereignty we need to remember that these lands that we all live on today originally belonged to certain people the contracts that came about between federal governments like canada first nations people or the united states and they'd of americans included responsibilities from those federal

governments to these people in order for ceding all this land we're talking about a huge huge huge amount of land the united states alone is massive canada is also just this massive and. just making unilateral changes to the indian act without so much as consulting first nations representatives in any way the parliament had nine months to debate this bill they did so they came up with this four hundred page document and they never even checked in with the assembly of first nations with any kind of representation that would really put that voice that really should be central when something like the indian actors change so i think that that's why we're seeing this kind of level of involvement we've been seeing a lot of bills that challenge maybe drinking water or tar sands in particular but to really attack indigenous sovereignty i think really brings that over the top and i don't think a lot of people realize what you're saying right now or as a first nations communities do have indigenous sovereignty that it isn't just like

another population of people living in the country it's more treated nation to nation and for them to kind of completely put you guys off of the the deliberation table is outrageous and you guys weren't consulted with at all about these these vast changes that you should have been involved in but the bill already passed i mean i mean what what can be done now. government passed this bill it's done what is the movement hoping to accomplish what options are left here to really turn this around. and i should just state clearly although i am native from south america and not these are not any of my nations here so i know that you were referring to. definitely and i'm not speaking for any of those nations at all but i do think i sort of understand some of what's at stake but i'm sorry to get back to your question can you restate it just so i was just saying and i'm an internationalist as well it's cool to hear that there's so much about another

country what's happening to the indigenous population there i applaud you for that you actually want to move on you guys are already doing obviously the activism that needs to be done to get this bill turned around but i want to ask you a larger question since we only have a couple minutes left it seems at the end of the day. this is all about respect for the commons the natural resources the connection of human beings have with nature why do you think it's so difficult for people to rally behind the idea that water air other natural resources in the environment collectively belong to people and shouldn't be privatized. you know i think that that is something that. a lot of people have hung onto for a long time and i think that people are making their voices heard in terms of seeing a lot of these resources as the commons and or as belonging to specific groups of people we talk about first nations people in canada we talk about reserves and certain bodies of water that are there i think that there is this notion that it

either belongs to them or it belongs to all of us and i i don't think that it's necessarily a new. way of thinking in fact i think that's the way that people have been thinking about land and water for the majority of our time here on this planet but i think that we're seeing a lot more activism about it now because people are seeing the kind of environmental degradation hitting places like new york i mean new york city right now and hurricane sandy you know that's two hurricanes two years in a row brand new for a place like new york and we're seeing the consequences of that and people are realizing that we're going to have to really change the way that we do things if we expect to survive we are global consciousness we we need to work together globally to really prevent this planet from becoming extinct and we are on the path of destruction but there's so much for coming on standing up for indigenous communities all around the world or a god to really push your time thank you abbi. so

late on monday night the newest b.c.s. national college football champions were crowned the day but it seems someone else took the limelight away from the crimson tide because on e.s.p.n. an announcer pointed out a certain fan in the stands and while the corporate media let's just say they became obsessed see for yourself. it works in chick fil a and she is famous because she was on a telecast that was widely watched on monday night she is also the girlfriend for about the last month of the quarterback for alabama for her if she is at pageant winner here is next alabama who course has a lot of charity work to keep doing if you believe the it does that any publicity is good publicity then perhaps this is

a good thing let's say hi now to katherine webb who is joining us exclusively katherine good morning nice to see you. hank is warning that harry i'm doing fine oh m g how shocking it pretty women are alive on planet earth but while this girl's probably live in the spotlight i don't know about you but i'd rather actually be learning something from watching the news so i'll highlight one story that wasn't quite sexy enough to make corporate media shortlists talking about a law student valving l three services a subsidiary of the defense contractor glitchy based in chantilly virginia the corporation has been forced to pay a total of five point two eight million dollars to seventy one former inmates at the infamous abu ghraib prison in iraq for being tortured and forty four different incidents and unsurprisingly since these payments were made two months ago the story has gone virtually unreported because this is huge this is the first time lawyers of former prisoners at abu ghraib have successfully collected money from

a defense contractor in a case regarding torture but wait a tick the amount was only five point two eight million dollars to be divided among seventy one people five point eight million dollars is the price of getting away with torturing seventy one human beings so that's seventy four thousand dollars a person pretty small players price to pay to break down someone's health and their dignity especially when it's public record that l three services was given a four hundred fifty million dollars u.s. government contract per year that's unfair to you but wait there's more critical a.p. report all three services not only knew about their employees participated in torture but they quote willfully failed to report repeated assaults and other criminal conduct by its employees to the u.s. or iraq authorities. in fact in case you've forgotten about how disgusting this scandal was it was probably the most infamous torture case in recent history and

turned out that the horrific methods used were approved up the government chain of command all the way to mr donald rumsfeld himself president bush even called the actions by soldiers of torrent a lot and even though eleven u.s. soldiers were eventually convicted and accused as merely a few bad apples no employee of health services was ever reprimanded and of course the u.s. government didn't hesitate to continue giving contracts to the company this is just the way it is but defense contractors are able to act with complete lawlessness protected by a veil of an puti and when they do get caught outright they can just spit out a few million dollars to quell the dissent and push the scandal under the rug after all five point two eight million dollars pales in comparison to the loads of cash our government awards them every year and yeah i guess it's great that a levin soldiers were held accountable and convicted for their crimes but

still criminal mastermind who is still running free mr don. touched the power of the wind or drift in the beauty of the current. the well prepared.

live. lola.

that speech. she gave her. her. mother wish i. was lucky. good luck. mother just sleep. and i'm. fine i'm a better. listener.

her. like what. to do if you've never seen anything like this. so right now i want to shift the focus and talk about a man who's currently under siege by the u.s. government for blowing the whistle on torture and this time know i'm not talking

about private bradley manning rather i'm referring to former cia analyst and senior investigator for the senate foreign relations committee john kiriakou in case you haven't heard the story i'll give you a quick rundown the carioca actually left his position at the cia in two thousand and four but three years later when waterboarding was a point of contention he was put into a media circuit as a commentator eventually to disclose the name of a covert cia officer to a freelance reporter now this was with no melon tent he simply wanted to help a journalist find a good source on this little slip of information that would cost him his career not only his career but also his livelihood on january twenty fifth preoccupies scheduled to be sent to two and a half years in prison as part of a plea deal with the government but even more significant perhaps is that he will fishley be the first cia officer to be convicted of disclosing classified information but is this case really about leaking classified information or is it about much more to talk about all of that i'm joined by justin radek former ethics

advisor to the u.s. department of justice a whistleblower and also the lawyer for john kerry our self thank you so much for coming on just like you and i really appreciate what you do talk about what exactly he's being charged with and talk a lot more about this act but john that was actually charged under largely most accounts were charged under the espionage act which is an antiquated world war one era law meant to go after spies not whistleblowers but unfortunately the obama administration has been on a campaign to prosecute whistleblowers for leaking even though the biggest leaker in our country is the u.s. government and what this case is really about is the fact that john exposed that torture. is a program and not just a few rogue agents that waterboarding is torture as a conclusion with which our tourney general agrees and our president agrees and for

that he is that's what they're really angry about which comes at a time when we have very high level cia people leaking names of undercover operatives for example from the movie zero dark thirty or leaking classified information to their mistresses all of that is going on punished which adds insult to injury and this double standard. and you know i can't help but think you know at the time he was he was a key source for many journalists and he was here he was out earlier talking about waterboarding about torture do you think that this would even be an issue if he was out there vocally supporting torture on the media. very good point no it would not be as evidenced by the fact that jose rodriguez who headed. our there in dition detention interrogation program wrote all about it in

a book that was approved by the cia in which he divulged divulge sources and methods and he is out. on the lecture circuit talking about his book and pimping and on sixty minutes and writing out beds with no problem because he's you know he's like i did i torture i do it again i would do it again and. john said we shouldn't be doing this and it doesn't work and we've got no actionable intelligence from doing so and how is this going to do you think that this will deter other former national security officers advisors from speaking out i mean are they just setting an example here yeah they absolutely are. they have ministration has six different prosecutions going against people in the cia. and say the army i mean the state department you're hitting all of the national security and intelligence agencies and they're definitely trying to send

a very chilling message in fact in the case against tom drake who had been with the blower whom i also represented that case ended up falling apart yet they still dropped all ten felony counts but wanted to find him thousand dollars to send a message namely to shut up i mean heaven forbid you should expose you should embarrass the administration with your disclosures but if you expose their illegality you're really going to pay you're in trouble and it's just i just can't help but think how bizarre it is that we're seeing all of this happen now i mean under the obama administration as you said he's prosecuted more whistleblowers than every other president so you combine dredging up this archaic piece of legislation to really do this why and now why is this happening right now albeit under the most transparent administration you know self-proclaimed of course yeah i ask myself that a lot as someone who had supported obama i think initially it was to curry favor

with the national security and intelligence establishment which has seen him as weak coming into office i think as these cases have evolved and accumulated it's been more about creating bad precedent for actually going after journalists who are in every single indictment and i think overall it creates and in effect it creates an official secrets act which we don't have in this country so even though obama was elected as the change president and on a platform of openness and transparency he actually has expanded the bush secrecy regime that had been put in place over the preceding eight years and this is a trend that will just continue to exacerbate over the next four years i do not see it getting any better i mean right now ironically brennan john brennan. who is the drone daddy and who have lived approved a lot of the torture techniques on which john kiriakou blew the whistle john

brennan is now nominated to head the cia so to me that clear cut find of what will get you promoted and then stay within the cia and what will get you thrown in jail just talk about it's just that i mean what does that say about a society about a country that we award applaud people who are committing these horrific acts i mean overseeing the assassination program completely without due process drone wars i mean we're putting them at top levels of these cabinets and then we're persecuting prosecuting and arresting those who are simply speaking out it's unbelievable it is. what's going on and to have people i mean think about it john you who wrote the memo the memos justifying torture he's a tenured professor berkeley jay bybee who also wrote this memo this is a federal judge everybody who has been involved in these very controversial

programs from torture warrantless wiretapping they've all been promoted and enjoy very high levels of power from the bush administration continuing into the obama administration and then when you slam whistleblowers like this not only are you forcing them to choose between their conscience and their career but you're choosing them to choose and sacrifice their very freedom it is not consonant with a democratic society that is supposed to be open and transparent to have this much secrecy and this kind of crackdown on people who are speaking truth to power of course is the technology becomes bigger that's going to be more they're going to seize upon more more i just want to have about a minute left but you've also been very vocal about bradley manning. i went to the event that you were speaking at another pretrial hearing just just happened from yesterday can you give us a quick update on what was determined. basically yesterday most significantly judge

lindh ruled on bradley manning's article thirteen. basically the torture hearing and found that he was subject to unlawful pretrial confinement conditions but that nobody meant to do it or intended to do it and therefore he got a four month sentencing credit which may seem like a lot and it's probably the most in the history of article thirteen it's like there's going to be nothing compared to what he's facing just thank you so much for coming on breaking it down i really appreciate what you do just an erratic whistleblower and lawyer official john kiriakou thank you. for the last twelve years the u.s. has been embroiled in the global war on terror launching

a preemptive invasions of countries form drone assassination campaigns and here at home ramping up the police and surveillance state to seemingly no end much of the news is focused on countries in the middle east and it's no surprise when you consider that the government's perennial blacklist includes countries like iran sudan and syria but there's also one latin american country on the same list one that's been on the government's blacklist for decades cuba. oddly enough although the u.s. labels cuba state sponsors of terrorism law that we realize that for the last forty years cuba has been subject to probably more international terrorism than most countries around the world and it all started from the direct outset of the cuban revolution in one nine hundred fifty nine when the us government began to discuss its intention to overthrow the new government of cuba by any means necessary aside from the crippling involved the us has been employing a multitude of other tactics an attempt to crush the socialist revolution things

like operation mongoose in the bombing of cuban airliners and boats and embassies but while all of this was going on there were also cuban opposition groups committing terrorist acts in and outside of cuba many of which were basically a miami florida most notably commandos of four brothers to the rescue and cuban american national foundation which were all supported by the f.b.i. and cia and whose activities caused thousands of cuban deaths now like any country looking to prevent terrorism on its own soil castro sent five men to miami and one thousand nine hundred to infiltrate these groups in order to thwart future terrorist attacks against cuba those men. fernando gonzales and they gonzales hernandez and ramon being the eno were infamously known as the cuban five because you see and one nine hundred ninety eight the f.b.i. arrested all five men men who some would call and terrorists and charged them with

committing espionage conspiracy against the u.s. as for the next seventeen months the cuban five were held in solitary confinement for their seven month trial commenced. in two thousand and one they were sentenced to four life terms and seventy five years in federal prison but the fight for their justice has been an ongoing struggle in fact in two thousand and five there was an appeal and the reversal of that appeal venture ending with one of the members being released albeit stuck in the u.s. on probation for three years but the fight is far from over to release these political prisoners however the glaring point missed in this is that these men were never here to commit espionage or conspire against the united states government their objective was simply to protect their homeland the same way the u.s. claims it does and so many countries around the world every day but perhaps even

worse is the more obvious truth which is that this government doesn't care about preventing terrorism if it did then it wouldn't be supporting groups like these groups human groups that i just mentioned what american foreign policy is really about is making sure that the last independent states are undermined and eventually destroyed the cuban five are symbol of that truth which is why they should never be forgotten. wealthy british style. is not on my list for. markets why not come to. find out what's really happening to the global economy

with max cons are for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into kinds a report. on . morning news today violence is once again flared up the film these are the images the world has been seeing from the streets of canada. giant corporations are old today. it.

looks. a little. i live.